Story
by Queen Edmund Pevensie
Summary: Team Free Will's Life in under a thousand words each, up until Dean is rescued from Hell.
1. Castiel

I was not born. I was created. Sculpted out of energy or stars or cold, hard marble from the side of a mountain or the depths of the universe by perfect hands without a face. The hands are cold and loving and careful. They do not make mistakes.

That is what they tell me. I'm young. I'm impressionable. They tell me that He created me with His own hands out of the kindness of His heart, that God's love is undeniable. They tell me to watch, to learn. The humans, the soft, hairless, ridiculous humans who stumble around blindly in a world full of so many wonders but see the thunder clouds as God's rage. You can learn from them, Castiel, they say. They're God's most perfect creation. Love them, serve them, protect them.

Then they drag me away and they train me. I become a soldier, one of God's. There are billions of us, more angels in Heaven than humans on earth. There is evil, they say. Even with God, and it's our job to stop it.

One day Michael takes control. We're only allowed to watch Earth from afar. Only a select few are allowed to take a vessel. It's lonely without the humans. Without God's world.

They stick me with an angel called Anna. She's brilliant, fierce, single-minded. I've never met anyone who loves God as much as she does. She says to me, Castiel, it is our duty to protect the world from Evil, it is our duty to love God. Follow me, Castiel.

And I do. I follow Anna until the day she falls, until the day she receives orders from a superior, and says, "no." Angels do not say no. Flawless, expressionless creatures created by God's hands, hands that do not make mistakes, are not created to say no, to think for themselves. They are created for obedience. They are created to serve God and his humans. Before Anna falls, not to Hell, but to Earth, she says, "Trust in God."

And I do.

I fight as one of God's soldiers. I am strong. I am obedient. I am faithful and loving. For years I am the model angel. I am what God intended for me to be: perfect.

And then, one day, I receive orders, a last ditch effort to save a soul from Hell.

They tell me nothing but a name. They don't tell me why he's down there, why he deserves to be saved, why now, why me. Nothing but a name: Dean Winchester. They say he's torturing. He needs to be saved. I recognize the name from overheard whispers.

There's two of them, I've heard, and the other one, the younger one, he's a monster. The King of Hell. His name is Sam. He's got demon's blood pumping through his veins. He's destined to rule Hell. Destined to destroy us. Destined by the plotting of the demon Azazel, who contaminated him, soiled him, found the perfect boy to be king. A monstrous king who wears the skins of children as robes and drinks the blood of mothers. He opened the Devil's Gate. He's a human hybrid who will end the world and damn us all. Right now, he's piss drunk in Illinois, but, my superiors tell me, he's Hell's most wanted.

Meanwhile, his brother's soul belongs to Heaven. There's a human torturing in Hell, and all they tell me is that he's going to save us. He will, whether he wants to or not. He's the only one who can. Save us from the new demon threats terrorizing the Earth, save us from Hell, rising, save us from his brother.

Sam Winchester's name is a warning; Dean's is a beacon of hope.

I descend into Hell and Dean Winchester is waiting, staring me in the face, tells me he can rescue himself. I don't introduce myself, don't know if he can see me, but I grab onto his shoulder, pull him out of the Pit. He's fighting the whole way, as if he doesn't want to be rescued because he's too proud or too ashamed, or maybe a little of both.

I hover above his grave. I don't have a vessel. He's somewhere else in the state, waiting for me. I'm on the Earth among mankind for the first time in 2,000 years, above Dean Winchester's grave. I call out to my superiors. I have other duties on Earth now, but before I move on, I must inform them that I have finished. I call out.

Dean Winchester is saved.


	2. Dean Winchester

Dean Winchester is born in the coldest, cloudiest month in 1979. But Dean Winchester is warm and chubby, and smiling before they know it. He's a good, quiet kid. He listens to his father and takes care of his mother. He's not shy, but he's not disruptive or wild.

When Mary gets pregnant with Sam, Dean puts his hand on her belly and says he's talking to Sam. He laughs sometimes, especially when he feels him kick. He tells John and Mary that he can't wait until Sammy is born, can't wait until he has a brother to play with.

Dean's little brother isn't all that he expected. He cries a lot and can't be left alone. Dean feels a little bit abandoned. John works all the time, maybe to get away from the crying, maybe because there's another kid in the picture and he needs to work more hours to support his family, but when John comes home, Mary gives Sam to John, gives John a kiss and whispers into his ear, "Your turn."

John grumbles that he doesn't remember Dean being this hard but he's not unhappy. Nobody's unhappy except for Dean. He just wishes that Sammy could hold his head up by himself so he could carry Sam without Mary hovering anxiously over his shoulder. He wishes Sammy could stand up and play like he could.

And then there's a fire and Mary is dead, and Dean, just four years old, doesn't understand why, no matter how John explains it to him. "Is Mommy coming home today?" he asks. "Where's Mommy?" He asks every single day until John is exhausted with the questions and stops answering. When John runs out of answers to give, Dean stops asking, and then he stops talking. John doesn't send him back to preschool. He doesn't know if he should send him to kindergarten the next year. He asks his mother and his step-father and his brother and some of the guys at the garage, and then he moves. They all said the same thing: you'll have to wait and see what's right for Dean.

He sends Dean to kindergarten in September, but he doesn't know if he should. Dean's talking a little again. But not to strangers.

Dean's scared about kindergarten too. He doesn't want to go. He decides the morning that John tries to take him. Dad's not being nice. Dad is making him go to school, but Dean is so scared his mouth won't work the way it's supposed to, and he can't remember the words he's relearning, can't figure out how to tell his dad that he doesn't want to go. John crouches down next to him, tells him Mommy would want him to go to school. John tells Dean he knows he can do it. He's brave.

Dean goes to school reluctantly, but he goes. And he comes home, a little quiet, but mostly okay and a little excited about going to school again tomorrow.

He's a good kid, no matter what town they drive through. He looks after Sammy when John is working; he looks after John when he comes home. He goes on his first hunt when he's ten, and when he's twelve he's embraced the life. John takes him out shooting. Dean gets a wild grin when he does, and he smiles and laughs when he's on a hunt. John knows that Dean's made to be a hunter. No matter how much he cares about his family, and everyone they save, Dean is made for this life.

Sam moves out when Dean is twenty-two and Dean takes it hard Eventually, he gets over it, right around the time he realizes that John's keeping an eye on Sam at school.

When he's twenty-six John leaves. He's preparing to die and he leaves while Dean's on a hunt and he knows that Dean won't like it; he might even go find Sam. He'll go find Sam at college, and he'll pull Sam back into his life, and Sam will follow because Sam always followed Dean's lead.

Sam and Dean Winchester become the dream team. Nothing stands in their way. John is proud of his boys.

When John dies and leaves Dean with a message that destroys him, he keeps Sam at arms' length and Sam pushes to get close. They struggle and push each other until Sam dies.

Sam dies, kneeling in the mud, on April 30, 2007, two days before his twenty-fourth birthday, and it takes Dean two days before he realizes that Sam is gone. He drives out to the nearest crossroads, pawns off his soul to the nearest demon, and Sam wakes up on his twenty-fourth birthday like nothing ever happened and Dean is thankful, until he does find out, and Dean gives in and tells him with the biggest smile on his face that he's going to Hell for him. His heart sinks guiltily when he sees Sammy chase his tail to save him. Dean's going to Hell but Sammy's going to run himself into the ground first, and then his sacrifice won't mean anything.

It will mean something. It means that Dean gets a couple more months with his brother, gets to see him smile a couple more times. And then, it's May 2, 2008, and Sam is twenty-five, and the last thing Dean will ever see is Sam crying. He holds onto that in Hell, holds onto Sam's face, missing him. He tortures for Sam. He stays human for Sam, and when he sees Sam again, he's so happy that Sam's okay that he can't think about the girl in her underwear or Dean's amulet around Sam's neck leaving bruises bigger than any Dean ever got.


	3. Sam Winchester

There are so many little boys with tired happy mommies and daddies and big brothers staring at them with wide apprehensive eyes, sticking a finger into eyes, hardly yet opened, but there are none as special as Sam Winchester, who, at six months old, is fed against his will the blood of devil-spawn and watches his mother burn up on the ceiling, feels his brother's arms around him as he stumbles down the stairs and into the front lawn. Sam doesn't remember this. He hardly knows anything about it at all until he's twenty-two, and his girlfriend, his sanctuary, his salvation is pinned to the ceiling just like his mommy.

He ran away from his life, from the monsters under his bed and in his closet and outside in graveyards and in old houses. He ran all the way to California, away from his father, away from his brother, away from a memory he doesn't have and a drive to kill, a need to hunt he doesn't want to acknowledge. He ran away from a darkness he pretended he didn't feel all the way to California, to a normal life, to school and grades and the path to helping people in a way that doesn't involve credit card scams and illegally purchased firearms and grave desecration.

But then his pretty girlfriend and normal life burned to ashes on his ceiling and all the money he was saving for an engagement ring burned right up along with it, but he doesn't tell the insurance people, doesn't tell Dean that he was going to propose, because all he can think about is how pointless it was, going to college, being normal. It was all going to end anyway. He realizes that there's one common denominator between his girlfriend and his mother burning up on the ceiling and it's him, and he thinks Dean must realize it too. If Dean knew what was good for him he'd get away from Sam, but Dean stays.

At least that's a constant too: Dean always stays.

Dad dies, and Dean won't talk to him, and the headaches and visions are getting worse and more intense, and Dean tells him that Dad told him that he has to kill Sam, kill Sam if he can't save him and they both spend months wondering: save him from what?

But Sam feels like he knows. There's something inside of him, something connecting him to the demon, something big and dark and evil pumping through him and it makes him angry and scared and he doesn't know how to explain it to Dean, he doesn't know how to rationalize it to himself, but he feels it. It's the blood, the demon blood that was dripped into his mouth when he was six months old, only Sam doesn't know that yet, not when Dean tells him about Dad's last words. But he _feels _it_._ He can feel it working, feel it pushing him, encroaching on him. Sam clings onto Dean for support, to stay afloat, but everyday he can feel the darkness more and more. He gets angrier and angrier every day, and he wishes it would just stop –

Until one day it does. He feels Dean's arms around him, hears his voice tell him it's going to be okay and then it's quiet, so blissfully quiet, like a dream, only better, and when he wakes up on a musty mattress with a sore back and bone crushing hug from Dean, Sam feels okay. He knows about the demon blood, but he feels a little like he's been reset, a little like he's got more control over the darkness inside of him. It's there, he knows, he can still feel it, he can feel it more than ever now, but he's got control. He's got Dean.

Except, Dean won't be around forever, and when Sam finds out about Dean's deal he can feel the darkness, the evil, flare up inside of him. Irrational, angry, willing to do anything but watch Dean die with a smile on his face. He's willing to become one of the things he hunts, willing to give in to everything that he hates he is. He's willing to listen to Ruby, whose smirk is more deceitful than Dean's ever will be; he knows that she's a liar, but he's willing to listen to her anyway.

Dean dies with a smile on his face and Sam's alone in a house with two dead bodies, one mauled by invisible dogs, one of a girl he never knew the name of but that he might have killed. He can't remember, everything is too jumbled, and he can't remember anything but Dean's smile, plastered onto his face for the rest of eternity. He hopes that Dean smiles in Hell.

Ruby hunts Sam down, talks him off the edge, teaches him to fight without Dean by his side, teaches him to fight for Dean, and Sam does. He fights and hunts and tracks down Lilith so he can have her head on a silver platter. That's all he wants except for Dean alive, but Ruby's made it clear that he can't have that.

And then, one day, after four excruciating months, there he is, dirt caked under his fingernails, smiling at him and all he can say is, "Heya, Sammy," like he was out on a beer run, and at first Sam can't believe it, but he doesn't have the energy or the strength to resist for long because there he is.

Dean Winchester: saved.


End file.
